Running ethernet 500 ft.

[brschuler96]

I have a cabin 400 feet from my house, I wanna get a 500 ft ethernet cable and run it to the cabin and install a router down there. Will this slow the internet in my house or will it be it's in separate thing. Also how much slower will the speed in the cabin be? Also my brother games all day, will this affect his speed? If I wanted to have a game system in this cabin would I slow the speed even more?

 

[Math Geek]

how it will effect is hard to say. you are taking the available speed and splitting it to this cabin and the house. whatever you use in the cabin will be taken from the house speeds. so overall, everyone will likely see a speed drop. depending on what speed you have to start with this may be a non-issue. for instance, gigabit speeds is so fast that taking some of it for the cabin won't make any difference overall.

but 100 mb service split between gaming, streaming video and all the other stuff you do will likely be an issue. if i recall right i don't think Ethernet likes to be run that long either. i'd have to look it up again but i believe once you get past 100ft or so, you have to amplify it to make sure you get a stable signal at the other end.

 

[anotherdrew]

The standard is 100 meters (about 300 ft). If you further you might have issues and you might not. The longer the run, the more signal degradation. Out in the woods, not a lot of things to add interference, you might get away with it.

If you have line of sight, I would consider a wireless bridge.

 

[nigelivey]

I would count on u having issues as 500ft as a single cable run. Point to point wireless link is the better option.

 

[bill001g]

The pretty standard solution when you are going more than 100 meter limit on ethernet is to use fiber. It is not hugely more expensive since a lot of the cost you propose in digging the trench and putting in conduit for the ethernet. For fiber in addition to the fiber you would need some small media converters or a small switch with optical ports.

They do make ethenet "extenders". What these really are is a form of private DSL. The actual speed you get is based on the distance but it is still far below ethernet. Its been years since I looked at these maybe they got them faster than 50mbps.

A very non standard solution I saw someone on this forum propose was to use a switch that could be run via PoE. This is not a PoE switch it is a switch that can take its power from ethernet like a end device. I did not even know these existed and are kinda rare. What you would do it put the switch in a water tight box about 1/2 way. This way you would have 2 250ft runs which is well withing the limit. He never reposted other than to say it worked but I am not a fan of burying electronic devices water seems to always get in anything.

As stated your best option is point to point wireless. Ubiquiti sells many models and so does engenius.

 

[nigelivey]

The pretty standard solution when you are going more than 100 meter limit on ethernet is to use fiber. It is not hugely more expensive since a lot of the cost you propose in digging the trench and putting in conduit for the ethernet. For fiber in addition to the fiber you would need some small media converters or a small switch with optical ports.

They do make ethenet "extenders". What these really are is a form of private DSL. The actual speed you get is based on the distance but it is still far below ethernet. Its been years since I looked at these maybe they got them faster than 50mbps.

A very non standard solution I saw someone on this forum propose was to use a switch that could be run via PoE. This is not a PoE switch it is a switch that can take its power from ethernet like a end device. I did not even know these existed and are kinda rare. What you would do it put the switch in a water tight box about 1/2 way. This way you would have 2 250ft runs which is well withing the limit. He never reposted other than to say it worked but I am not a fan of burying electronic devices water seems to always get in anything.

As stated your best option is point to point wireless. Ubiquiti sells many models and so does engenius.

https://www.amazon.com/Axis-Communications-T8129-Extender-5025-281/dp/B008BMX13C

 

[anotherdrew]

Another less common way to do this would be with coax ( 10Baee2 and 10Base5). These can be run over longer length (up to 500 m). Finding adapters could be difficult since it's a standard not used much anymore. But, there is a newish thing called MoCA. I don't have any personal experience with it, but I'm sure Google has information. Generally I'm not a big fan of things that aren't widely adopted. Support can be limited.

 

[kanewolf]

If you look at this thread -- http://www.tomshardware.com/answers/id-2728049/moca-long-distance-extenders-repeaters.html you will see that MoCA has the same limitation as twisted-pair. But @RealBeast has another potential option for 100Mbit connectivity ...

 

[jfreggie2]

Could also run fiber between the two buildings and get media converters for either end.

 

[RealBeast]

Agreed with Bill and Kanewolf, if you want to use a wire use the Ethernet extenders I linked in the other thread, I've gotten 100Mbps with them on runs of 500-600 feet but I always use outdoor CAT5e (even though you can use twisted pair it is really nice to have the extra wires)

If you have line of sight a pair of inexpensive outdoor Ubiquiti APs (Ubiquiti Air Grid M2 or M5 are what I use because they are cheap and have everything you need other than a pole and some spare Cat5e) is fine, but lots of folks don't have line of sight.

Fiber and the adapters is usually more expensive than home users will spend.